A Ghoul's Guide to Love and Murder (3 page)

“What the hell, Em?” he said when he'd emptied the contents of the safe.

I stared wide-eyed at him. “It was there before we left for vacation,” I swore. “I know it was because I had to move it to one side to get to our passports. Sometime in the last three weeks, somebody got into the safe and took it.”

Heath stared at me; then he inspected the door to the safe, which showed no tampering. “Who the hell knew about the dagger and also knew the combination?”

A trickle of sweat slid down my back. “The only other person who knows the combination, besides you and me, is Gil, but he'd never take it. I mean, he's afraid to even look at this safe, knowing what's inside.”

“So this had to be a professional job,” Heath said quietly, his eyes roving around the room suspiciously. I looked about too, and I knew that both of us were worried that we'd been burglarized, but nothing else seemed to be missing. My laptop was on the desk, and my scanner/copier—an expensive one—was over to the right, both untouched. In the corner our camera equipment was piled on a table, along with two extra laptops that Gilley had as backups.

I got up and went over to my filing cabinet, where I kept the small box filled with petty cash, and the money was still there and also untouched.

“Someone came in here and took the dagger but left everything else alone,” I said, a cold chill vibrating up my back.

Heath sat down in the chair I'd just vacated. “So,
somebody with knowledge of that dagger came in here and robbed us?”

A second chill radiated down my spine and along my arms. “If that's true, then they'd only want the dagger for one purpose: to cause harm.”

Heath ran a hand through his long black hair with trademark white streak along one temple. “We could be in serious trouble if that happened, babe.”

I pulled out my phone and brought up a local news Web site. I scrolled through the stories from the past few weeks looking for any hint of unusual and violent deaths in the area, but it didn't look like anything involving the dagger had occurred. No strange or unexplainable stabbings or deaths. No rooms destroyed by an invisible demon. No telltale talon marks left behind to photograph. Nothing.

Which only meant that the magnets binding the dagger hadn't been removed. Yet.

“We have to find it!” I said, feeling myself starting to panic. That dagger had been our responsibility. We'd promised people that it was safe with us. That they could trust us with it. To find it missing was like discovering that a vial of anthrax was loose in the city. It could only bring about horrendously terrible things.

My phone rang as Heath and I were staring at each other, wondering how we were going to track it down before the spook Oruç and his demon had a chance to possess someone and kill someone else. Lifting the phone again I looked at the display. “Gil,” I said, not even bothering with the niceties. “I can't talk right now. We have a situation.”

“You're not the only one,” he drawled. “The flower shop wants more money and the caterer is refusing my calls. Why are wedding people so difficult?” He nearly shouted. And then he did shout.
“Why, God, why?!”

“Gilley!” I told him firmly. I had no patience for his antics just then. “I'm serious.”

“And I'm not?”

My brow lowered and my fist clenched. “Heath and I just looked inside the safe in our office, and . . . Oruç's dagger is missing.” On the other end of the line there was silence. I took it for shock. “Gil?” I called. “Honey, are you there?”

“What were you doing in the safe?” he replied, which was an awfully interesting question—given the circumstances.

“Putting away our passports,” I lied before focusing on him again, my suspicions raised. “You don't sound surprised that Oruç's dagger is missing. Why?”

There was a long pause; then Gilley suddenly said, “Oh! It's the caterer. Thank God. Sorry, M.J.—gotta take this call.” And the little bastard hung up on me.

I pulled my phone away from my ear to stare at it in shock before I connected the dots.
“Son of a bitch!”

“Talk to me,” Heath said.

I ignored him for a moment as I dialed Gilley right back. It rang three times before going to voice mail. “My left foot he was on the phone with the caterer!” I spat. Had he actually been on the phone, the call would've gone straight to voice mail. Three rings
meant he was purposely ignoring me. I nearly threw my cell across the room I was so furious. Only the fact that the iPhone is a six-hundred-dollar piece of technology not easily replaced stopped me. But just barely. “That . . . weaselly . . . sneaky . . . manipulative . . . little . . .”

“Em,” Heath said, coming over to me to grab my shoulders and get me to focus on him. “What. Happened?”

“Gil,” I said through clenched teeth. “He took the dagger.”

Heath blinked. “Why the
hell
would he do that?”

I called Gilley again. “I have no idea, but when I find out, you're going to need to stop me from stabbing him with it.” Again the phone went to voice mail, so I clicked off his number and over to Michel's.

“M.J.!” he said when he answered the line. Michel is Scottish-born, but his mother was French. He's a gorgeous man, about five-ten, black hair, sharp features, and beautiful big brown eyes with the most lovely brogue that becomes heavier whenever he talks of home. He's very laid-back, patient, kind, well-spoken, and polite, and the absolutely perfect complement to Gilley, who is almost never any of those things. “How was your trip?”

“Michel,” I said, bypassing the niceties to get right to the point. “
Where
is Gilley?”

“Where's . . . uh-oh, don't tell me he's gone off and done something stupid again.”

“He's gone off and done something
insane
again,” I said. “He's stolen an
extremely
dangerous relic from
our safe here at the office, and, Michel, in the wrong hands, and by wrong hands I mean
anyone's
hands but ours, that thing is seriously scary. Deadly scary. I need to find Gilley and get it back asap.”

There was a pause, then, “Might you be talking about that dusty dagger from the Turkish warlord, M.J.?”

I gasped. “That very one, Michel. He's shown it to you?”

“Yes, I'm afraid so,” Michel said, a hint of worry in his voice. “And a few more people have likely seen it as well. But no one's been hurt or upset by it as far as I've heard. You're sure it's dangerous?”

My heart rate ticked up into the red zone. “What do you mean ‘a few more people have seen it as well'?”

“Oh, has Gilley not told you about where he's taken it, then?” Michel asked.

I moved unsteadily over to one of my office chairs and gripped it hard as I sat down. Putting Michel on speaker so that Heath could listen, I said, “He hasn't told me squat, Michel, and as I said, that dagger is
deadly
, so please, if you know where it is, please tell me.”

“Oh, M.J.,” Michel said, “I'm so sorry. I made him promise me before he did anything to get your permission, but you know Gilley. He's a wee bit willful when it comes to money.”

I put the phone on the desk and lowered my head nearly to my knees, on the verge of a panic attack. “Please, please, please tell me he hasn't sold the
dagger!” I cried. If Gilley had put innocent bystanders in jeopardy I really would kill him.

“No!” Michel was quick to say. I felt Heath's steadying hand on my back. “He hasn't sold it. He's simply loaned it to the museum hosting the exhibit for the movie.”

I glanced up at Heath and shook my head. I was unable to say anything more. I simply needed to focus on breathing. Heath took the cue. “Michel, Gilley hasn't mentioned anything about it. Please tell us what the hell is going on and start from the beginning.”

We heard the faint sound of a creaking chair and I imagined Michel leaning back in his desk chair and swiping a hand through his hair, his own anxiety probably ratcheting up now that he was stuck in the middle and playing the role of messenger. “The studio called Gilley about two weeks after you two left for your trip. A producer from Prescott Productions said he'd heard about the dagger, and he told Gilley that a haunted relic like that would be the perfect thing to really draw in the crowds. He asked Gilley if he would consider loaning it to the museum for the length of the exhibit, and at first Gilley said no, but then the producer called back and offered Gilley a sum of money that my sweet fiancé simply couldn't refuse. So Gilley agreed to the loan, but he also demanded that he be in charge of securing the dagger for the exhibit. When I pressed him about it later, he insisted that the dagger was safe and there was no threat of its being stolen or any harm coming to it.”

“The harm wouldn't be coming
to
the dagger, Michel,” I said. “It would be coming
from
it.”

“Yes, so you've said,” Michel said soberly. “Had I known that, M.J., I never would've allowed him to take it from your office.”

My hands were curled into fists. I'd never been more angry with Gilley in my life. “Michel?” I managed, my jaw still clenched.

“Yes, love?”

“Would you please call your fiancé and tell him to meet us at the museum in half an hour, and, Michel, let him know that if he doesn't meet us there in that time, then I will personally post to my Twitter feed and Facebook pages all his deepest secrets, including his real height, age, and weight and why his last boyfriend broke up with him.”

Gilley was very careful about controlling his online image. The mere suggestion that I'd tell the world the truth about his age would be enough to have him sprint down to the museum, where I would then murder him, but that was beside the point.

“Oh,” Michel said. “It's that bad, then, is it?”

“It is.”

“All right, love, I'll get hold of him straightaway.”

The second he clicked off the phone I got up and moved to the closet. Yanking open the door, I shrugged out of my sweater and took out a black canvas vest lined with over a dozen magnets, hanging on a hook inside the door.

“Wait,” Heath said. “You're going to wear
that
?”

The vest was a spare. It was made for us by Gilley's mom a year earlier, and while it was truly sweet of her, the bedazzled
Ghoul Getters
logo on the back was perhaps a bit much for either Heath or me to be seen in public with.

We had subtler clothing at home. “There's no time to go to the condo right now,” I told him, pulling out the one that Mrs. G. had made for him. “We'll wear these. They're fine.” When he looked at me skeptically, I snapped, “Do you really want to waste extra minutes before retrieving the dagger because you're embarrassed by a few rhinestones?”

Heath opened his mouth but stopped himself. I had a feeling he'd been about to say yes. Perhaps it was the no-nonsense glare I offered him that made him (wisely) hold his tongue and put on the damn vest.

“At least I've got my boots here,” I said, reaching back into the closet for my black leather riding boots. Shrugging out of the modest heels I'd worn on the plane, I slipped into them, feeling the carefully placed interior pockets—the boots were also lined with magnets—slip past my toes.

We'd discovered on a casual ghostbust about a month before we were able to quit the show that magnets in our shoes prevented any of us from being possessed. It had something to do with grounding our energies to the earth, I think. It didn't really matter what the mechanics were; it worked and I was grateful to have discovered it.

Heath stared down at his running shoes. “Mine are at the condo.”

“We'll be fine,” I said, bending to zip up the boots. “What's important is that we've got enough between us to protect us, and once we get our hands on the dagger, we can use some spare magnets from the vests to pack the dagger in until we get it back here.”

“Worst-case scenario, Oruç and his demon could get blinded by the rhinestones,” Heath said as he took the vest and unzipped it to take out the hanger.

I sighed. I was in no mood for jokes. This was a scary and deadly serious situation, but sometimes my husband made jokes to help lighten his own anxiety. And I got it, but at times it was still a little annoying.

Once I was done getting dressed, I nodded to Heath, who had also just finished getting into his own gear.

Within six minutes of hanging up with Michel, we were out the door and headed to the museum, ready to wage war against the nastiest spook and demon you'd never want to meet.

We arrived at the Museum of Modern Science twenty-eight minutes after walking out the door of my office. And they were twenty-eight anxious minutes, believe me.

The museum itself is a gorgeous structure—lots of glass and sharp angles—a very modern showpiece not far from Boston Harbor and situated right on the water. If I'd been in the mood to tour a museum, this would've been the one I'd have chosen, but I was more in the mood to murder a certain five-foot-six, one-hundred-sixty-two-pound thirty-seven-year-old who was unceremoniously dumped by his previous boyfriend for cutting his toenails while eating a doughnut in bed. (Oh, gee golly whiz! Did I just spill Gilley's most tightly guarded secrets? Oopsies . . .)

Anyway, we had to pay ten bucks for parking, then sprint to the museum itself. Once there (and after
paying thirty bucks to get us both inside), I was sort of at a loss for where to go. I'd told Gil to meet us at the museum, but not specifically where.

“The exhibit is upstairs,” Heath said, and I turned to look at him and saw that he was pointing to a poster next to the central hallway. On the poster was an ad for the exhibition and a few shots from the movie, including a close-up of the Grim Widow herself. It was enough to make me shudder.

“Maybe he's already here,” I said.

Heath arched a skeptical eyebrow.

I frowned. “Yeah, I know, but let's head up and look for the dagger and someone to help us get it back.”

We walked toward the elevators, but there was a line, so we took the stairs. I was a little winded by the time we reached the top but ignored the urge to catch my breath in favor of getting to the exhibit as quickly as possible. To my absolute horror, I saw a line of people waiting to enter the exhibit where Oruç's dagger was on display. It hit me that we'd arrived at the exhibit just a few hours after it'd officially opened to the public on its first day, and I'd been unprepared to find it so popular already. I'd figured that if any kind of crowd was going to show up, it'd be in a few hours when Gilley was set to make an appearance and talk about his time on the show and some of the ghostbusts we'd done. To see a long line of people already waiting to get in felt a bit surreal and, to be honest, highly flattering, but then I remembered our mission. I was about to tell Heath that we should look for someone in charge to speak with when a woman in line turned and
pointed at me. “Oh . . . my . . .
God
! It's them! It's M.J. and Heath!”

I stiffened in shock as a whole line of heads turned, eyes bugged, and then about forty people rushed right toward us. Heath grabbed hold of my hand and pulled me close to him as we were swarmed. I resisted the urge to run, but barely. Smartphones flashed as people took pictures, and more phones were raised high as others recorded our shocked faces. My hearing was flooded with a barrage of excited chatter: “I can't believe you two are here! Are there cameras?”

“Will you sign my program?”

“Ohmigod, Heath, you're so hot! Will you sign my chest?”

“M.J., are you and Heath really dating?”

“Ohmigod! Is that a
wedding ring
?! Heath! Did you and M.J. get married?”

“Where's Gilley? Are the others coming?”

“My house is haunted and I really want you guys to come do a show about it . . .”

Belatedly, I realized I'd not only lost hold of Heath's hand but my sight of him, and I was now backing away from the crowd. Several months earlier I'd been mobbed by a group of possessed mental patients, and I found this situation to be no less threatening or scary. “Heath!” I yelled as several programs and pens were pushed at me, while hands gripped my arms and pressed on my back. The memory of being overrun by those possessed patients was starting to press in on me, and I found it hard to breathe.
“Heath!”

My husband suddenly stepped in front of me, and
in a loud, booming voice he commanded, “Everyone,
back the hell up
!”

To my immense relief, the shocked crowd fell silent and took several steps away from us. I pressed against his back, shaking and trying to get a grip. Heath then reached back for my hand again and pulled me to his side, where he then wrapped a protective arm around me. “We're not here to sign autographs today, folks,” he said. The crowd groaned, but it felt only halfhearted, probably because they were still in shock at Heath's outburst.

“Excuse me,” said a voice somewhere beyond the crowd. “What's going on here?”

A gentleman stepped forward wearing a blue blazer and dark gray dress slacks. He wore a lanyard with a badge that looked official, and carried a walkie-talkie in his left hand. I assumed by his surprised and annoyed expression that he represented museum security.

Shaking off the fright I'd had, I said, “Do you work here?”

“Yes,” he said brusquely. “What are you two doing to incite this crowd?”

“We're from the show,” I said, pointing to a blown-up image over the entrance of the exhibit that pictured Heath and me running across a bridge as if our lives depended on it. (Which, at the time, they definitely did.)

“Nobody told me there'd be any public appearances until later on tonight,” the man said. I saw the name Murdock on his employee badge.

“We're not here for a public appearance!” I snapped. (The mobbing of the crowd had seriously rattled me. I think I took it out on poor Murdock.) “Sir, you have a
very
dangerous relic on display in there!” For emphasis I pointed to the entrance of the exhibit. “And we've come to collect it before it can cause anyone harm.”

All around us there were gasps, and I realized my mistake immediately. Whispered murmurs of “Which relic is she talking about?” and “I'm totally going in there!” and “Quick, let's go see what she's talking about before she takes it away!” filtered out to my ears as the crowd turned away from us and rushed back toward the exhibit entrance.

I watched them go and palmed my forehead. How could I have been so stupid?

“We need to get in there,” Heath said to the guard, who'd thankfully been the only one who'd remained next to us.

“I can't let you take anything from in there!” he said, as if he were offended that Heath would even ask.

“You don't understand,” Heath insisted, squaring his shoulders and standing up to his full height. Heath isn't overly tall, or overly brawny, but he can put out the most powerful presence when he wants to.

Murdock took a step back and lifted his walkie-talkie. “Rob, we've got a situation up in the ghost movie exhibit. I need Mr. Sullivan here. Stat.”

There was a garbled reply that I couldn't quite make out, and I could feel my impatience and anxiety mount as more and more people crammed into the exhibit room.

For his part, Murdock simply stared into space as he held the walkie-talkie about face level. It appeared he was waiting for orders.

I tapped my foot impatiently, ignored the occasional lifting of a smartphone in our direction followed by the occasional flash, and muttered a few obscenities under my breath.

“Why are we standing here?” Heath finally asked the guard when he continued to stare into space without explanation.

“I gotta wait for the boss to tell me what he wants to do with you two,” Murdock growled. It was clear he had no love for us, and vice versa.

“Well, we don't,” I said. Squeezing Heath's hand, I turned away from the security guard and marched with authority toward the exhibit entrance.

“Hey!” Murdock yelled. “Get back here!”

I ignored him and ducked into the crowd, weaving between people who, thankfully, made way for us, but not without excited murmuring as we passed. At last we came out into the exhibit room, and as I stepped to the middle and looked around, I was too shocked to speak.

The exhibit was impressive. It lined all four walls and unfolded the story of our show like a timeline. There were photos galore—all the haunted spaces that the show had investigated, the scary still shots of the spooks we'd busted, and profile pictures of each member of the
GG
crew.

Another wall had small snippets of our show playing on a loop, and on a third wall there was a
poster-sized photo of some ectoplasmic fog filling the floor of a room, which was taken from one of our ghostbusts in Europe. Belatedly I realized that a dry ice machine was pumping out a similar fog along the floor of the exhibit. Glancing down, I shuddered when I realized I couldn't see my feet; it brought back dark, nightmarish memories.

Yet another wall held memorabilia from the show. There was a whole section filled with nothing but the weapons we'd used over the past couple of years against the various nasty spooks we'd encountered. Everything from our magnetized railroad spikes to the tennis racket strung with magnetized wire we'd used against the Grim Widow, to the Ghost Enhancer, which was a contraption that looked like a radio but amped up the electromagnetic field around a given area, something that actually made the spooks stronger, and which we'd needed for two particular busts we'd done. It was a fairly dangerous contraption in the wrong hands, and I made a mental note to ask for that back as well.

Nearby I saw that one of our crew jackets had been framed, and there was even a female mannequin wearing nearly the exact same outfit I had worn on many of the
Ghoul Getters
episodes.

Amid all of this, playing eerily in the background was a recording of a compilation of terrifying sounds—disembodied footsteps, a series of faraway screams, muttering whispers, and what could only be described as long nails raking against wood, but I knew better. The sound was actually a set of talons, etching deep
grooves slowly and terrifyingly into a wall. The sound bite had been pulled from the hotel in San Francisco where Oruç's demon had been set loose to terrorize and kill.

Another shudder traveled through me and I focused my attention on a display case toward the back wall. There, with a light trained on it, was the dagger itself. Crowded around it were several people, reading what was likely a description of the dagger and the dangers it held. Luckily, there were enough magnets surrounding it, and the people in the room, to protect us all—at least I hoped so.

“There,” I said, pointing to it.

“I see it,” Heath replied. “And I think there're enough magnets in here to hold Oruç and the demon inside the dagger, at least.”

“Excuse me!” we heard from behind us. We both glanced over our shoulders to see a very fit-looking man with intense eyes, a crooked nose, and thick black eyebrows approach us. “What are you two doing here?” he demanded, slightly out of breath, as if he'd rushed to the exhibit from downstairs. “I wasn't told about any public appearances by the stars of the show until later on. We're not staffed with enough people to accommodate this right now!”

Behind him I realized that the crowd currently attempting to enter the exhibit had grown almost exponentially. People were literally flooding in, and the scene was making me more and more anxious.

I shook my head at both the unfolding scene and what the newcomer had just said. I don't consider
myself famous—certainly not a star—and yet, everyone who came through the door seemed to have a hand raised with a phone that was either flashing or recording. It was
super
-disconcerting. “This was a spur-of-the-moment thing,” I heard Heath say to the man. And then he stuck out his hand, as calm as could be, and said, “Heath Whitefeather, sir.”

“Phil Sullivan,” the man replied, shaking Heath's hand, but there was little warmth to his expression. “I'm the museum director. We should've been notified that you two were coming.”

“We had no idea this would happen,” Heath said, blinking in the flashing lights of several smartphones.

I was starting to lose patience with this whole thing. Pointing to the display case with Oruç's dagger, I said, “We just came to collect that, Mr. Sullivan. As soon as you open the case and let us retrieve it, we'll be on our way.”

Sullivan's gaze followed my index finger to the display case across the room. He then looked back at me as if I'd asked him to hand over all his cash. “You're kidding me, right?”

“No,” I said to him. “I'm definitely serious. That relic has no business being on display. It's insanely dangerous. We need to remove it. Now.”

He stared at me as if he expected me to wink at him, and when I didn't, his face flushed red with irritation and he put his hands on his hips. “Listen, I've got a museum to run, and I don't need any publicity stunts
today. Not when two members of my security staff are out sick with the flu!”

Heath stepped a little closer to Sullivan, projecting that glorious presence again. “Mr. Sullivan, I can assure you this isn't a publicity stunt. That dagger houses a ghost and a demon, and both are among the most dangerous we've ever dealt with. That dagger needs to be locked up away from the public, not on display here where there could be exposure to its influences.”

Sullivan rolled his eyes and then glared angrily at Heath. “Listen, buddy,” he said, “I know you two gotta keep up the pretenses for the sake of the movie, but I'm telling you to drop the act and leave before this situation gets out of hand.”

Around us I could hear the excited murmurs ratchet up a notch—the crowd sensing the tension in the air. Others, though, must have overheard me talking about Oruç's dagger, because the group around the display case where it was housed was growing and people were hovering dangerously close.

Taking Heath's cue I drew myself up to my full stature (keep in mind, I'm not very tall) and inched closer to Sullivan. “Sir,” I said sternly. “This is not an act. That relic over there was entrusted to us to look after and we can't do that if it's here. I demand that you give it back.”

But Sullivan wasn't budging. He folded his arms across his chest and said, “I have a signed contract from the movie studio paying us for this display. I'm not about to put that contract into breach just because
the two stars show up and try to throw their weight around. If you want it back so bad, you're going to need to go through the museum's attorney, and good luck with that, Miss . . . Miss . . .”